Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech, privacy and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. The team is Neil J. Wilkof, Annsley Merelle Ward, Nicola Searle, Eleonora Rosati, and Merpel, with contributions from Mark Schweizer. Read, post comments and participate! E-mail the Kats here

The team is joined by Guest Kats Rosie Burbidge, Stephen Jones, Mathilde Pavis, and Eibhlin Vardy, and by InternKats Verónica Rodríguez Arguijo, Hayleigh Bosher, Tian Lu and Cecilia Sbrolli.

Monday, 14 July 2014

Last week this blog carried the first in what is intended as a regular series of blogposts that list and conveniently summarise the feature posts of the previous week, the idea being that readers who are either away or too busy to keep up with Katposts, and who find themselves faced with a build-up of information in their in-boxes, can decide in retrospect which ones are worth their while to hunt out. Former guest Kat Alberto has kindly agreed to prepare these posts. Are they are a good idea or not? Readers have clearly voted with their mice, since last week's round-up received more clicks than almost any feature listed below, with the exception of Birgit's post on the Apple store retail lay-out episode (listed below). Anywhere, here are the posts that you might have missed last week:

Darren showcases a guest post
by Glyn
Truscott on a Jamaican patent case in the Jamaican Privy Council
(Pfizer
Limited v Medimpex Jamaica Limited and Others). The case relates to Pfizer's
Amlopidine besylate, a drug for the treatment of high blood pressure. Among
other things, the Privy Council delves into the fascinating concepts of local
novelty. How couldn't that be loved?

The second Canadian tale
of the week concerns a cross-border trade mark fight between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Church of Jesus
Christ of the Latter Day Saints Inc. (yes, "Inc"). The first
renounced polygamy some 120 years ago, the second still believes that one
partner per life need not be enough. Concurrent wives and concurrent use of
trade marks in
Lucas' first guest-post -- who could ask for more?

These are
challenging times for colour trade mark case law -- and therefore busy times for our colour TM specialist Birgit. After the
Court of Justice of the European Union ('CJEU') decision in the
'Oberbank/Santander/DSVG' [on which see here], here's another colour trade mark case, brought to the German Bundesgerichtshof by the Cologne Court of
Appeal. We have dictionary publisher Langenscheidt on one side and language
software house Rosetta Stone on the other. Both want to use yellow. One wants
to use it alone. What will the Bundesgerichtshof say?

Eleonora reports
about her brainchild poll "Do you think that EU copyright should have a
specific exception for user-generated content (UGC)?"'s results. The IPKat
readership's idea on how to strike a balance between copyright and users'
freedom is evolving, and not in precisely same direction of the EU Commission
and its Vice-President Neelie Kroes -- which is not necessarily bad.

David pens a note on last week's High Court of Justice, England and Wales, decision in Wilko Retail Ltd v Buyology Ltd. Following a trade mark dispute about Buyology selling infringing goods bearing
Wilko's trade marks, the parties settled under an agreement that did not
provide guidelines about Buyology's disclosure of its commercial partners
involved in the infringement. Wilko wanted to know those names, regardless the
settlement. Can it do so?

The EU Commission is establishing
"a list of economists, researchers and experts specialised in the
economics of IP" for a workshop on “commercial scale” and “commercial
purpose” in the context of IP infringements that will take place next 19
September. Jeremy reflects upon self-referential meetings on IP enforcement and
urges those who can add interdisciplinary value to pitch in.

A post on one of the
most surprising trade mark decisions of recent years comes from Birgit, who
writes on the CJEU's ruling in Case C-421/13, Apple Inc. v Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt. The Court considered if
and, if so, how trade marks can protect "representation, by a design alone,
without indicating the size or the proportions, of the layout of a retail
store" -- in a few words, a flagship store. This CJEU decision will
likely influence the whole field of commercial environments' protection in
Europe.

It's again the CJEU,
again on a reference from Germany, and again on trade marks. In Netto
Marken-Discount AG & Co. KG v Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt the Court
addresses the issue of how a service of bringing together services to
allow consumers to compare and purchase them can be considered 'a service' in
the meaning of the TM Directive. The decision could touch fields other that the
retail one, and Jeremy wonders whether trade mark offices should get more in
touch with the real world.

Following the
blogpost “Have U.S. courts made patents less valuable?" and the lively
discussion on it among Kat readers here, Neil provides for
more food for thought on the matter of patent value by summarizing and
commenting Intellectual Asset Management Editor Joff Wild's response to his earlier Katpost.

Marie-Andrée recounts
the melting tale of the Winston family, where Harry built up a worldwide famous
jewellery company in 1932 which now tries to prevent his son Bruce from
registering his own name and surname as a trade mark for jewellery with the
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Being surrounded by precious stones does
not lead to happiness -- even though it might help.

Over the past month, every
undertaking's dream was to have a bit of promotional space in the Brazil 2014 World
Cup, which terminated yesterday. A few of them did it officially, becoming
FIFA's partners, while others bypassed it with ambush marketing practices. This seems
to be the case of Blue Man, a Brazilian swim suit manufacturer, on which
katfriendDavid Serras Pereirapens this guest post.

5 comments:

Re: IPKat readers want fair use - Weren't the results *precisely* in line with what Ms Kroes proposed? She criticized current regime as inflexible. Now if fair use isn't about flexibility I don't know what it is about.

Alberto, Ms Kroes might have not mentioned 'fair use' in her speech, but she spoke of exceptions that are currently outwith Article 5 (user-generated content and, if you don't buy UK take on TDM, also that one). The results of the poll were in the sense of having more exceptions within Article 5 or outside it (via fair use). That is exactly the same or a very similar direction not the opposite one, as you instead suggest in your summary of Eleanora's poll and post.

Dear Anonymous, I might have lost something, but I have never heard Ms Kroes advocating for fair use. It's a pity -- I think it would be much more funny and profitable both for RH and for the Others to have it in Europe. If my post says that Ms Kroes doesn't want more flexibility in general system, I apology for that -- I didn't mean it. But still, one thing is searching for flexibility, another is implementing fair use.

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